Britain has its third prime minister in two months: on October 25th King Charles III asked Rishi Sunak to form a government. Mr Sunak, a former chancellor of the exchequer, had been declared the new leader of the Conservative Party the previous day. He won a hurriedly organised contest without a single ballot being cast, by becoming the only MP to gather the 100 nominations needed to qualify for the race.

Mr Sunak does not promise a transformational programme. His task is to salvage Britain’s fiscal credibility, suppress inflation and end the cycle of crisis that has consumed the Conservative Party. Mr Sunak is the party’s fifth leader since the Brexit referendum of 2016. He helped bring down the third, Boris Johnson, by resigning from his cabinet in July as the weight of scandal surrounding Mr Johnson became too much to bear. He was beaten to be the fourth by Liz Truss, who triumphed in the summer’s leadership campaign but announced her resignation as prime minister on October 20th after 44 calamitous days in office.

“The United Kingdom is a great country but there is no doubt we face a profound economic challenge,” said Mr Sunak, in an uncharacteristically stiff statement from the party’s headquarters on October 24th. “We now need stability and unity, and I will make it my utmost priority to bring our party and our country together.” If he can keep his job long enough to guide the Tories to nothing worse than a modest defeat at the next general election, he will have done well. A small Conservative majority would be a thing of wonder. The Tories are trailing the Labour Party by margins of over 30 points in the polls. Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, is reckoned the better prime minister by 38% to 29%, according to a poll by YouGov; Sir Keir is rated better than his rival in 389 constituencies to Mr Sunak’s 127.

Fraught though his task is, Mr Sunak enters office vindicated. A deficit hawk, he had spent the summer campaign warning that Ms Truss’s package of unfunded tax cuts at a time of rising inflation amounted to a fairy tale. She did not listen, and her infamous “mini-budget” of unfunded tax cuts triggered a sharp sell-off in sterling and government debt that led to her own swift demise. British government-bond prices rose sharply as Mr Sunak’s victory became apparent. In his first speech as prime minister, outside 10 Downing Street, he said that “mistakes were made” on Ms Truss’s watch. “Not borne of ill will or bad intentions. Quite the opposite, in fact. But mistakes nonetheless.”

One of his first decisions will be whether to keep in post Jeremy Hunt, who was appointed chancellor by Ms Truss to undo the damage caused by her budget. (Crispin Blunt, a supporter of Mr Sunak, has said it would be “inconceivable” to move him.) Mr Hunt has been preparing a programme of fiscal consolidation, which is due to be announced on October 31st; Mr Sunak must quickly decide whether to stick to that timetable, too.